Empowering users with Microsoft / Office 365

#Microsoft365 #Office365 #SharePoint – Have something to say? Well here’s a great web part to use on your Intranet and to get communications out. I’ll explain how to add the web part to your page as well as how to build your first article.

DISCLAIMER: I WRITE ARTICLES ABOUT OFFICE / MICROSOFT 365. CONTENT IS ACCURATE AT TIME OF PUBLICATION, HOWEVER UPDATES AND NEW ADDITIONS HAPPEN DAILY WHICH COULD CHANGE THE ACCURACY OR RELEVANCE. PLEASE KEEP THIS IN MIND WHEN USING MY BLOGS AS GUIDELINES.

News

You can keep your team in the loop as well as engage them with important or interesting stories by using the News feature on your page or site. You can quickly create eye-catching posts like announcements, people news, status updates, and more that can include graphics and rich formatting. Use the News web part on a page.

My thoughts:

The News App is added to the new modern SharePoint Sites automatically. They appear on the landing page and it’s entirely up to you if you’d like to use it or not. At first I thought this was just another place to post news NOT read by people. However, trust Microsoft to go do something cool and include this in the updates that goes through to your SharePoint mobile App. Yup – that’s what changed my mind.

Adding the web part:

If the web part has been removed off your page, it’s pretty easy to put it back.

Put your page in to edit mode and click on the “+” to add a new web part. Choose News, save and publish your page:

This is something I really like about this web part, I don’t have to navigate to the site contents to add an item on the app, I can do so straight from the landing page. Click on +Add:

Creating a News Article:

If you’ve worked with Wiki pages before, this should be easy. Adding a News article opens a new page (which is stored in the Site Pages library), and allows you to:

Add an image for the banner (and thumbnail for your article)

Name the page

Add new web parts

These are the web parts you can choose from. So yes, you could write a new article on how great the adoption of Office 365 has been in the company and then add the Power BI web part to display the report. Nifty right? 🙂

I mostly use text and image web parts. Once I’ve added my first text web part, I first change the layout of my page. Positioning your web parts in a “magazine like” fashion will make it more attractive of course. Here you’ll see the different layouts, I chose 3 columns:

Here’s an illustration of what using text and image web parts in a 3 column layout will look like. Keep in mind that when the article wraps, it will display it column by column, so you might end up with two images below each other on the mobile view:

Changing the layout on the landing page:

Once saved and published, the article will show on your landing page. You can also configure the layout of the web part on your landing page by editing the page:

Edit the web part

Choose another layout

Here are the different layouts you can choose from:

Top Story Layout:

The latest article will show on the left in a larger thumbnail while the next 3 articles will appear on the right.

List layout:

Here articles will appear in a single column below each other:

Side-by-side Layout:

This layout uses two columns and articles will appear next to each other:

Preview of the article:

Here’s your preview on PC and Mobile. How sexy is that??!! In the next post I’ll chat with you about the different ways of promoting your articles as well as what updates you can expect from Microsoft.

Purpose of this blog challenge: I will write 365 blogs in 365 days around Microsoft 365. I did a similar challenge with Office 365, blogs can be found here. I won’t just be talking about the new Microsoft 365 subscription model. I will be sharing any news, tips and tricks around Office / Office 365 / Windows / Mobility and Security. And let’s not forget all the great new Apps & services available. A lot of what I’ll share on Office and SharePoint will also be applicable to none “Office 365” versions.